Extinction

by J. T. Brannan

  ‘Indicators are one thing,’ Tomkin said impatiently. ‘The events we’ve just seen are like a big flashing neon sign. It’s unacceptable, Professor.’

  Breisner nodded. ‘You’re right. It is unfortunate. But I’m afraid such exposure is very much part of the deal. We cannot test the device without ramifications of some kind. You must surely realize that.’ Breisner wondered if he’d overstepped the mark by addressing the general in this way, but the man merely paused, head bowed.

  ‘OK. What’s done is done, we can’t change that now. Just tell me that it was worth it. Is the device operational?’

  Breisner shook his head very slightly. ‘Effective, yes. Obviously. But not yet fully operational. There are some details that need to be ironed out. Questions of control and direction. Obviously, the device needs to be fully accurate, and I cannot guarantee that at the moment. But we are close,’ he said with pride. ‘We are very close.’

  Tomkin grunted. ‘Close doesn’t cut it with me, Professor. I want results; that’s what you’re paid for.’

  ‘We are on schedule,’ Breisner countered.

  Tomkin stared at him through the computer screen, his blue eyes piercing. ‘Good,’ he said firmly. ‘Make sure you don’t fall behind.’

  Breisner nodded. He knew what would happen to him if he let the general down.

  Moments after the connection was severed, Breisner’s head snapped round as his landline desk telephone started to ring. He picked it up instantly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Professor Breisner?’ the voice on the other end asked; a tearful female voice, and Breisner knew instantly who it was.

  ‘Yes. Is that Liz?’ he asked, his voice sympathetic. He knew what Anderson had done, and that Janklow’s sister had been given the party line about the ‘accident’. He thought it had all been dealt with, and wondered what she wanted.

  ‘Yes,’ the voice came back. ‘I’m sorry to call so late, but I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘Oh? Changed your mind about what?’

  ‘About collecting Karl’s personal effects. I’ve decided to come. I . . . I need closure, I think. I hope it’s still OK.’

  OK? Damn, it sure as hell wasn’t OK, but Breisner knew he had to keep up the pretence of normalcy; he mustn’t arouse the woman’s suspicions. They would just have to escort her in, show her Janklow’s workstation; maybe he’d even have a word with her himself, offer his condolences personally; and then she would be escorted off again, and the whole sorry incident could be forgotten.

  ‘Of course it’s still OK,’ he answered. ‘When do you want to come?’

  Alyssa smiled as she cradled the telephone next to her ear. She checked her watch; it was still before midnight up at the base. ‘There’s a flight that will get me there by tomorrow evening.’

  10

  ‘HAVE WE IDENTIFIED the woman yet?’ Anderson asked as the private jet carried him back towards the frozen wastelands which sheltered the HIRP base.

  ‘Negative,’ the answer came back over the satellite phone. Anderson had left some agents behind to investigate the scene – physically check CCTV footage, interview witnesses, and so on; he had also been in contact with the experts back at the base, ordering them to make an immediate electronic search for the woman. The computing power at HIRP was enormous, and Anderson had instructed the CCTV footage of the mystery woman to be plugged into the system for a facial match to be run. The woman may have been in disguise, but the dimensions and contours of the face would be unchanged.

  He had also ordered a thorough background check on Janklow, including finding all the interviews done during his security vetting checks when he had applied for the post at HIRP. The woman was probably known to Janklow, and looking back at his past might well provide them with the answer.

  The woman obviously wasn’t Janklow’s girlfriend; Leanne Harnas was already dead. Unless he had another? Anderson thought this unlikely, but you never knew. The man’s mother was dead, and his only living female relative was his sister, Elizabeth Gatsby. His agents had already established that she was at work teaching grade school over five hundred miles away when Janklow had met the woman at the park.

  It was possible, of course, that the woman was genuinely unknown to Janklow; perhaps he had been approached by someone, forced to work for them.

  The intelligence analyst back at the base went on, ‘We have, however, highlighted evidence of a detailed web search about HIRP performed very recently.’

  Anderson considered the matter. It could be nothing; HIRP was always the target of conspiracy theorists, and so web searches were nothing to get excited about. However, the timing seemed just a little too coincidental. ‘Where did the search originate?’

  ‘We’re still working on that, sir,’ the man answered. ‘But it might take some time – the search was initiated by a secure system, on a protected network.’

  This started alarm bells ringing for Anderson; the crazies didn’t normally have access to such technology. It indicated that the investigator was professional, and Anderson again considered the possibilities – another government department, a foreign intelligence agency, or the press. Any of them spelt trouble.

  ‘Concentrate on that,’ Anderson ordered. ‘By the time I get there, I want to know where that search originated.’

  Alyssa was glad to be able to go home at last, for one night at least. Get some proper sleep, in her own bed. The next few days promised to be busy.

  She had reported in to Rushton, who had been amazed by her gall. He had at first refused to countenance the idea of her getting on to the base by pretending to be Elizabeth Gatsby, but she had finally won him round and he was now in the process of lining up some false identification papers for her. He could sense a big story and although he acknowledged the danger to Alyssa, the reward might just be worth the risk.

  The task of impersonating Liz should not be too difficult, Alyssa reasoned. By her own admission, Karl’s sister had never visited him at the base, and nobody there was ever likely to have met her in person. She realized that the security personnel might have pictures of Liz, but she knew she would be able to make herself look sufficiently like the woman to pass muster. Their body proportions were very similar, they were the same age, and Liz wore glasses – a great accessory to mask the face. The only major change would be hair colour – Alyssa’s was dark brown, whilst Liz was a redhead.

  She was going to have to get some hair dye, several bottles of the best, and so she headed across town for the minimart just a few blocks from her apartment building. It was the middle of the night but the store was open twenty-four hours a day.

  She would get the things she needed, sort her hair out back at her apartment, get some much-needed sleep and then meet up with Jamie Price at the office in the morning. She could then get the rest of her things ready before catching the 2 p.m. flight up north. She hoped Rushton’s sources would have the ID ready in time.

  She decided to avoid the subway due to the late hour and keep to the streets. She would have caught a taxi but the roads were gridlocked – at this time? she wondered – and she knew it would be quicker walking. And anyway, she lived less than a mile away.

  It wasn’t long before she was questioning her decision, however; even though it was way past the time people were normally out – except for the regular die-hard party fans, of course – the streets were still clustered with people. She realized that it was possible that some of the apartment blocks had still not been cleared after the earthquake.

  But it soon became apparent that it was something more than that. People were actually taking to the streets in protest, visibly shaken by the week’s events. The various religious sects and cults were still plying their trade on the street corners, and seemed to be attracting huge followings. She checked as she walked and, sure enough, soon came across a preacher dressed in a white robe and wearing a gold headband. A few dozen people had gathered round him, listening intently, and he was urging them, in the name of the Order of
Planetary Renewal, to prepare for the cleansing of the world.

  The next street she chose was obstructed by a group of angry people – all ages, men and women, some wearing suits, others in rougher clothing – demanding to know what the government was doing to ‘save’ their country. Armed police were already starting to arrive on the scene, and Alyssa turned off, following a side road down to an intersection.

  Things were quieter here, but only because the craziness had already been and gone. Storefront windows were shattered down the length of the street, the shops looted, empty. Cars lining the streets had evidently been set on fire at some stage; many were still smouldering, although most were gutted wrecks. A group of six men wearing greatcoats and carrying three-foot lengths of wood started marching down the street from the far end but were soon intercepted by a group of policemen. Alyssa turned down another street before she became embroiled in the confrontation; the sound of shouting and then heavy impacts, followed by two gunshots, made her quicken her pace.

  It was one thing to hear about riots on the television, another thing altogether to see them up close. Alyssa had seen worse during her career but she wasn’t used to witnessing it so close to home. It scared her.

  She arrived at the minimart ten minutes later, her route mercifully unopposed by any more rioters or protestors. But instead of the minimart’s normal night-time trade of a few dozen people at any one time, there were now several hundred crammed into it. People were buying all they could, just in case. In case of what? Alyssa thought about trying somewhere else, but soon decided against it. Another store might be even busier than this, and who knew what she might have to walk past to get there.

  Pushing through the door, she entered the melee.

  The store was busy but calm, people nervous but controlled as they moved along the aisles filling their baskets and trolleys with things they would probably never need. Alyssa tried to get what she wanted as fast as she could, but the sheer numbers were against her; it took her twenty minutes before she joined the long check-out queue. By then the mood was starting to change. The close crush of people and the interminable waiting was wearing down whatever patience people still had.

  The first shouts came from the aisle next to Alyssa. That’s mine! It was a woman’s voice, coarse, penetrating. Get your hands off it! I mean it! The man’s voice was equally coarse, threatening. Then others joined in, and there was scuffling as the man and woman went for each other. Shopping carts were pushed to the side and crashed into shelves as people tried to split them up. More shouts erupted, and then it sounded as if a full-scale fight had broken out down the aisle, and not just the man and woman now but many more, taking sides against each other. Alyssa flinched as the shelves swayed towards her, pushed by the struggling bodies on the other side. It held, but only just.

  And then other fights broke out, all around the store, and Alyssa watched in mute desperation: two men kicking a woman on the floor, their feet repeatedly stomping on her belly, her head; another man driven face first into a refrigeration unit, the thick glass shattering and cutting him, blood pooling down his neck and chest to the floor; four women fighting in the queue directly in front of her, pulling each other’s hair, kicking at each other with sharp heels; and then the man with the gun.

  At its appearance, the whole store seemed to go quiet for a fraction of a second; or at least that was the way Alyssa would later remember it. Maybe it only went quiet in her own mind as her senses focused on the terrifying sight in front of her: the dull black metal of the pistol being raised by the panicked man in the pinstriped suit and glasses, the slight pressure on the trigger, the slide ratcheting backwards and forwards, the empty shell casing ejected; the head of the woman next to her exploding, covering her own face with the unknown woman’s sticky, thick, bright red brain matter.

  Despite herself, Alyssa screamed. The man dropped the gun in terrified recognition of what he’d done and was tackled to the ground by the people surrounding him. Alyssa clamped down on her scream. As she watched the gunman being mercilessly kicked to death by the crowd, his glasses broken across his bloodied, smashed face, she knew she had to keep her head together or she wasn’t going to make it out of there alive.

  Wiping the blood and brain tissue off her face, she went into a low, protective crouch and looked around, assessing the situation. The gunshot had acted as a catalyst for true chaos to break out, and her options were limited.

  All around her, scenes of violence erupted, as people started fighting everywhere, most using just their fists but others using bottles, shopping carts baskets and any other improvised weapon that came to hand. People trying to escape were trampled underfoot, their screams muffled by dozens of pairs of shoes and boots.

  And then the sheer force of the crowd smashed through the storefront windows, glass shattering on to the street outside, people spilling out after it. The violence gave way to looting then. People gathered up as many items off the shelves as they possibly could and raced for the huge opening that was once a window. People fled from the store carrying piles of goods in their arms or in overflowing baskets. Some even pushed their shopping carts over fallen shoppers on their way out, crushing them.

  Alyssa edged her way forwards, sidestepping as a man fell to the floor, hit on the side of the head by another man wielding a heavy piece of wood. She looked outside to gauge her chances of escaping through the window, and decided that they weren’t good. Shoppers were being jostled and shoved to the ground by people pushing their way out of the minimart with their stolen goods; and Alyssa now noticed that other people were actually entering the store through the hole where the window had been, opportunists seeking to loot the store, maybe perfectly normal people until recently, now possessed by the mentality of the rampaging mob.

  She looked to the check-outs and saw some of the staff fighting running battles with the looters, trying desperately to stop them, but it was hopeless, there were simply too many of them.

  Alyssa sensed movement behind her and reacted, dodging to one side as a greasy fat man in a suit threw a punch at the back of her head. Without even stopping to consider why he would do such a thing, Alyssa stamped down on his knee. As the leg buckled, the man’s weight collapsing on top of it, Alyssa grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head straight on to her knee. The impact knocked him out cold and his heavy body hit the floor. Alyssa was no stranger to fighting – had discovered years earlier that she was actually good at it – but she knew when discretion was the better part of valour. She couldn’t fight them all.

  You’re a climber, she told herself. Climbing’s what you do. Her eyes tracked upwards, following one of the nearest aisle’s huge central shelving units as it led up towards the plasterboard ceiling, and knew that she had a chance. Climb!

  She started to push against the crowd, avoiding punches, to her disgust even treading on some of the other shoppers who had fallen to the floor, until she was at the shelves. And then she started climbing, fingers gripping each shelf in turn as she pushed off with her feet, propelling herself upwards.

  Hands started to claw at her from below, and she kicked out – hitting an arm here, a face there – and then she was at the top, pulling herself up on to the shelving unit, which ran from one end of the store to the other.

  Keeping down, she quickly crawled along the length of the unit, ignoring the cans thrown at her by the people below. She saw the staff exit at the rear, saw how it was unobstructed, everyone’s attention on the broken glass of the storefront, and knew that was going to be her way out.

  She felt the shelving unit begin to sway underneath her, and looked down to see a group of women pushing against it, trying to send it smashing down to the floor. Again, Alyssa didn’t stop to ask herself why they would do such a thing; instead, she looked at the shelving unit across the aisle, doing a quick mental calculation. Could she make it? It would be a standing long jump, with no room for a run-up. But it seemed so far. Logic told her that it was only two metres – f
ar enough, but not out of the question. But up there, balanced precariously three metres off the ground, the women below screaming for her blood, it seemed much further.

  But what choice did she have?

  And so Alyssa braced herself, did a half-squat, and jumped straight over the aisle. For a few brief, terrible moments she felt she wasn’t going to make it, would miss the shelves entirely and fall to the floor where she would be kicked to death by the angry mob; but then she was there, landing with a shudder on the top of the shelves opposite.

  Her balance was good but she still almost lost it, struggling to compensate for the movement of the shelves that came from her weight hitting the top of it. But she managed to stop herself from falling over the edge, and composed herself. The exit was three aisles over.

  The women below her pointed and screamed, rushing forward to push at the new line of shelves. Other people in the store started to notice her too, the mob mentality taking over, and they joined the women below and started to push at the shelves, for no other reason than that they could. They could take this jumping female down and kick her to death, and nobody there in the shop would judge them for it, they were free from all constraint. Alyssa could feel the violent energy, and jumped, just moments before the shelving unit collapsed.

  She teetered on the top of the next one, getting her balance again, blocking out the screams of the people trapped beneath the crushing weight of the shelves behind her, and then jumped again.

  She was a prime target now, people from all over the store were heading towards her, but it was quieter at the back, most of the crowds were at the front, and those coming for her were hampered by the crush and the obstruction caused by the fallen shelves.

  Looking forwards once more, she made her final jump to the last shelving unit, her legs tired now, collapsing under her as she landed, spinning her off the top. She gasped in momentary surprise and panic but managed to correct herself as she went over the edge, catching hold of the top shelf with her strong hands; but her own weight, combined with the momentum of her jump, started to pull the whole unit down, and she shouted at the people below her to get out of the way, riding the shelves down as the unit arced towards the floor and jumping clear as it crashed down into the aisle with a deafening noise.